Felicia’s voice dropped a level. ‘When he gets out of line?’

Striker cracked the knuckles of his left hand and nodded.

‘We can only hope.’

Thirty-One

Harry sat in the undercover police cruiser and gazed vacantly down the long stretch of Pacific Avenue. Out there, beautiful girls in Lululemon tights walked back from yoga classes while others rollerbladed in mini-shorts and bikini tops down the seawall.

Harry saw none of it. His mind was busy, preoccupied with bad thoughts from bad times.

Pieces of a past better left forgotten.

The explosion at the Granville Island Market had rattled him. Shook him so hard that it flung out all his feelings of grief and depression. In their place now were some new feelings. Concern. Trepidation.

Disbelief.

Could it all be connected?

Keisha Williams. The toymaker. Dead. It scared him.

When Harry had seen her remains on that cold steel slab at the morgue, he’d gone lightheaded. Felt his blood pressure spike. And he had damn near keeled over right there in the room. Even now, sitting in the cruiser, that numb jittery feeling spilled all through his legs.

He looked down at the two photographs he was holding and felt haunted and desperate all at once. The first photo was of his deceased son Joshua, and had been taken just two weeks before the boy’s death. The second one was of Ethan, taken just one year ago.

Harry prayed to God that nothing bad was in store for this son. He couldn’t take losing another child. Losing Joshua had broken his heart in every way possible. Calcified the tissue and scarred the membranes. It was a wonder the organ even beat any more.

But it did. And that was solely because of Ethan.

Ethan was what mattered now. The boy was everything. And nothing would ever come between them, Harry knew, because he would not allow it. He believed in that. He had faith in that.

So why would this numb uncertainty not leave him?

He closed his eyes. ‘Oh Christ. Please oh fucking please.’

He rubbed his hands over his face as if this would erase the emotional turbulence he was experiencing, but it did nothing. The past was like a bad dream that recurred every so often. Even when he thought he’d finally learned to suppress it, suddenly, unexpectedly, bang – there it was again. And Harry would realize once more that it was never truly gone. It was just lying there dormant, somewhere below Life’s skin. Like a malignant fucking tumour.

He tried to suppress it. Tried to kill it so many times. But the past was not pencil that could be erased; it was ink – there forever, indelible, though just a little more faded with every passing year.

When Harry could take the thoughts no more, he took in a deep breath and shouldered open the car door. He climbed out onto Pacific Avenue and slowly made his way down the block towards the old heritage home on the south side of the road.

He didn’t want to go there; he had to. There was an unspoken code. A duty to perform to old friends. And all that aside, it was a necessary step in the safeguarding of his own future. Yes, there was no doubt about it.

Chad Koda needed to know what was going on.

Thirty-Two

Dressed in a grey workman’s suit from the local phone company – and with a fresh strip of gauze covering the stitches Molly had given him to close the gash in his cheek – the bomber stood in the centre of Chad Koda’s living room and assessed his setup. Everything was now in place. Perfectly.

Ever since the girl had stumbled into the steel barn down by the river, it felt like he and Molly had been in a constant cycle of assessing and adapting to the original plan. But they were almost back on track now.

Almost.

The notion of it should have brought him some peace, should have made him smile. But it did not.

Too many bad things still needed to be done.

The bomber looked down at the victim before him. Strapped to a leather office chair, duct tape stretched across her mouth, industrial-size zap straps binding each wrist to the corresponding chair leg, was the doctor. Her long straight hair hung over her face as her head drooped forward. She looked like all her spirit had left her.

Like she’d finally succumbed to her fate.

The bomber paid her no heed. He just worked on what needed to be done and whispered the old familiar rhyme to himself:

Tommy Atkins went to war

and he came back a man no more.

Went to Baghdad and Sar-e.

He died, that man who looked like me.

The words made the doctor glance up fearfully. Her dark, wide eyes held a sense of exhaustion and wariness. And when he looked into them, she looked away – as if he were some kind of dog she feared might frenzy at the challenge.

Suddenly, his radio crackled to life.

‘All clear,’ Molly said.

He keyed the mike. ‘Copy. All clear.’

‘Requesting sit-rep.’

‘Copy the sit-rep. Placing the package. Five minutes.’

‘Copy,’ Molly said. ‘Placing the package. Five minutes.’

He wheeled the doctor into the kitchen area, where she would be seen the moment Koda walked through the front door. He positioned her next to the kitchen island, then removed the toy ducks from his bag. He stared at the small wooden birds, each one dressed in a policeman’s uniform. One of them – the duck with the big red 6 on the front – was the same duck he had brought with him to the steel barn down by the river.

For the woman.

The other duck, identical to the first but with a big red number 2 on the chest, was for Chad Koda.

The order was wrong because their plans had gone awry. But it was what it was, and the lack of order made the bomber smile. In some ways, it matched his shambled memories.

He grabbed the metal O-ring attached to the bird and pulled the string:

‘These criminals are making me quackers!’

That made him smile. It never got old.

He carefully placed the toys on top of the kitchen island, less than a foot away from the doctor. At chest level. Then he placed the bomb, hidden in the cardboard box, directly behind the two birds.

It was done.

He pulled out the remote activator, which had been constructed from the internal components of a cell phone and a laser pointer, and then the radio came to life once more:

‘White male. Approaching from the south. Quarter block.’

He keyed the mike. ‘Copy. White male from the south. Quarter block.’

‘Up the walkway.’ Molly’s voice raised in tone. ‘He’s coming your way!’

‘Copy. Up the walkway. Coming my way.’

The bomber looked at the kitchen door that led to the back lane where he had parked the utility van. He would never make it there in time – not if he wanted to reach the observation point and be in visual contact when the bomb activated.

‘At the front door!’ Molly broadcast. ‘Retreat now. Retreat.’

The bomber said nothing; he just moved quickly out of the kitchen, into the dining room area, and squatted down on the other side of the hutch. This location was still close to the bomb – maybe too close – but the hutch was made from solid maple wood, and it was heavy. He gripped the activator in his hand and waited for the lock to click and the front door to open.

But seconds passed, and the click never came; instead, all he heard was the hard rap of knuckle bone on the wood.